More smoking stories in the news
Sunday, September 29, 2013 at 18:00
Simon Clark

Just arrived in Manchester for the Conservative party conference.

Here are two more newspaper reports that feature quotes from Forest today.

According to Scotland on Sunday, 'Support grows for smoking ban to be extended'.

It includes a quote by me:

“The public smoking ban was introduced to protect non-smokers from the alleged risks of second-hand smoke. There is not a shred of evidence that smoking outside is harmful to any non-smoker, young or old.

"This is all about denormalising smoking, pretending that smokers don’t exist.

“What next? Are they going to ban smoking in all outdoor areas, forcing people to smoke at home?”

On a separate issue the Mail on Sunday reports that 'NHS 'bans' GPs from carrying out minor operations on patients who smoke unless they promise to quit'.

This time I am quoted saying:

"Smokers pay a huge amount of money to the state through taxation – more than £10 billion a year. That far outweighs the cost of treating smoking-related diseases, and even of treating cases such as this, which have nothing whatsoever to do with smoking."

Article originally appeared on Simon Clark (http://taking-liberties.squarespace.com/).
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